Blogito, Ergo Sum

by Gregg Calkins

 

30 March 2010, a Tuesday

The world ended and nobody noticed:

Finally Smashing Particles Properly

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics machine, began to collide subatomic particles Tuesday.

If you are worried about the world ending as a result of getting too warm, here’s a reassuring link for you: http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/03/atlantic-ocean-sediments-confirm-roman-medieval-periods-warmer-peerreviewed-research-determines.html

Atlantic Ocean Sediments Confirm Roman & Medieval Periods Warmer, Peer-Reviewed Research Determines

Read here. View full map source　here　and/or click on image to enlarge.　From the　Sargasso Sea,　researchers worked with a combination of "biweekly hydrographic data, a long history of sediment trap collections to document the rain of particles from the sea surface to the seafloor, and exceptional deep sea cores of sediment" to reconstruct sea surface temperatures stretching back some 3,000 years. The empirical evidence confirms that the Bermuda sub-tropical area　experienced　warmer temperatures during both the Roman and Medieval warming periods versus modern temperatures. (click on image to enlarge)

(My note: I left this image out, you’ll have to go to the link.)

"The core-top data indicate temperatures of nearly 23 degrees, very close to the average temperature at Station S over the past 50 years. However, during the Little Ice Age of about 300 years ago sea surface temperatures were at least a full degree lower than today, and there was an earlier cool event centered on 1,700 years ago. Events warmer than today occurred about 500 and 1,000 years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, and it was even warmer than that prior to about 2,500 years ago."

"These results are exciting for a few reasons. First, events as young and as brief as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period have never before been resolved in deep sea sediments from the open ocean. Because the Sargasso Sea has a rather uniform temperature and salinity distribution near the surface, it seems that these events must have had widespread climatic significance. The Sargasso Sea data indicate that the Medieval Warm Period may have actually been two events separated by 500 years, perhaps explaining why its timing and extent have been so controversial."

More historical charts　here. Other　climate history　postings here.　Modern　temperature charts.

What the vast majority of people without earth-sciences training simply cannot comprehend is the sheer dimension of geologic time compared with man’s very, very tiny lifespan on the planet’s surface.

But even within man’s historic record we seem to have not studied a lot or retained a lot, although to be sure modern scientific instruments are an extremely recent development and prior to their development all records of cold and warm spells were anecdotal.

It’s only very VERY recently that we have felt like we had the ability to assign some kinds of numbers to earlier planetary temperatures. The Antarctic and Greenland ice cores, and now the Sargasso Sea cores, are helping tie this all together after geology leaves off. Geology, after all, deals mostly with rocks (I’m simplifying purposefully) and there aren’t many rocks which have been formed in the last 3000 years other than igneous flows...the others are still unconsolidated sediments.

I keep trying to tell people that sure, accredited scientists may have to do the hard and heavy lifting, there are arcane formulas to master, but you don’t really have to be a trained scientist to simply use your head.

We’ve seen from several sources, scientific now as well as anecdotal, that the globe used to be warmer than it is now, even during man’s short span, and during those warm periods human life flourished and civilization expanded, whereas during the colder periods such as the Dark Ages, things weren’t so good.

Now you don’t have to know one scientific fact about the efficacy of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in different levels of the atmosphere in order to conclude that man-made carbon dioxide could not possibly have been the causative factor before and really does not seem to be a significantly contributing factor today, if any.

Once that thought has occurred to you, though, you have to wonder what is really behind all of these schemes to control carbon dioxide if it isn’t to control runaway planetary warming and catastrophe?

Alas, the answer is the usual one: money and power, money and power.

From an essay on liberal versus conservative thought:

Jonathan Haidt, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, found that conservatives could more readily put themselves in the shoes of liberals and understand morally where they were coming from. The reverse was not true of liberals. They have little understanding of those with opposing views to their own. ...

I often wonder if this "blind spot" for conservatives is similar to the psychopath who cannot comprehend the morality of those who are "normal." At the present time, there is no known cure for treating the psychopath. Trying to get someone on the left to see where a conservative is coming from may be as difficult as trying to change the mind of a psychopath. Perhaps that will happen one day.

I think of myself as more conservative than liberal, of course, but it seems to me that we are more willing to accept the fact that we might not be absolutely correct whereas the liberal is absolutely certain that his mental superiority also conveys moral superiority, therefore the conservative is Just Plain Wrong!

I have an atheist friend who assures me that his own self-devised moral code is far superior to that of religious people...and it is obvious that he considers this to be unvarnished fact.

It seems to me that I hear from conservatives statements like "I can see where you are coming from, but I disagree" whereas the liberals simply cannot see where we are coming from...although I would relate it more to people who are color-blind rather than psychopathic.

The first time I met a person who was actually color-blind (which, by definition, means he doesn’t see the same colors the majority of us do) it was difficult for me to believe. They would test us with these pages of colored dots on which we "normals" could see a number but he simply could not. I finally had to just accept this as being so: we were simply different.

One of the things I did notice at the time, and this was LONG before my political years, was that he was far more upset with me about my ability to see the numbers than I was with him for being unable to see them. It was almost like all of the rest of us were pulling some trick on him, and he didn’t like it.

Off to the polls, from Real Clear Politics:

In the USA Today/Gallup poll taken over the weekend, the President maintains a 47% approval rating, with 50% disapproving. Two-thirds of voters think the health care bill costs too much and expands the role of health care too far, 50% think passage is a bad thing, and 53% thought the Democrats' tactics constituted an abuse of power.

Nonsense, says this liberal lady:

Even though the Obama administration tried to stress the bill's benefits to all families -- insurance for folks with preexisting conditions, restrictions on companies dropping you when you get sick, letting kids stay on parents' policies until they're 26, as well as subsidies that will mainly go to middle- and working-class families (the poor are already covered by Medicaid) -- a Gallup survey found that 57 percent of white respondents said that the bill would help the uninsured, and 52 percent said that it would improve conditions for low-income families. Only a third of whites thought it would benefit the country, and shockingly, only 20 percent thought it would benefit their family. (Nonwhites polled were more likely to say the bill would help their families.)

Come on, get real. The MAIN reason given for this need was the 20-30-40 million uninsured people! If anything, it’s astonishing that only 57 percent of while people bought that idea.

Except for those who voluntarily choose to forgo buying insurance, who are these people? Well, they’re more likely to be unemployed than not, isn’t that so? And the unemployed are more likely to be poor and also black, isn’t that so? I mean, I read the complaints about the differences in income and unemployment rates.

And even if the low-income people are on Medicade, why wouldn’t this bill improve their condition...especially when Obama says it will benefit ALL families?

And what’s surprising about the fact that only 20% thought it would benefit their family, if they already have a program which satisfies them?

This lady is a liberal color-blind racist, frankly. Her column is titled "What’s Wrong With White People?"

I was particularly amused at her "shock" over the fact that only a third of whites thought it would benefit the country. I mean, this presumes a rather simple yes/no answer to a complicated question; in order to interpret their answer you’d have to dig a lot deeper than just a simple question.

It’s easy to say yes, it would benefit the country, but after that you have to talk about the drawbacks and figure out if it would be a NET benefit, in the long run. Maybe it would, I don’t know, but I’m certainly not shocked to learn that others have their doubts. On the other hand, my liberal friends have none at all.

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